Baba Brinkman - Creationist Cousins lyrics

Creationist cousins, they're my relations, I love 'em But when they talk about Jesus and Revelations and Judges I've gotta take it up with them 'Cause there's a better explanation for the place that we come from, okay? Creationist cousins, they're my relations, I love 'em But at the dinner table we get on some crazy discussions I'm always questioning their basic a**umptions And saying, "yes I believe we came from monkeys, okay?" That's the idea that most enrages Darwin's detractors The idea that we came from ape-like ancestors Some people still question this, and say: "If we came from Monkeys, then how come there's monkeys still in existence?" Allow me to illustrate a similar instance I'm descended from Dutch Calvinist immigrants Who came to Canada in the 1950s And I still have second cousins who live in the Netherlands But they're not my ancestors; they're my relatives Since we have common genetic elements Inherited from our great grandparents That's just three generations back, but here's the relevance Three thousand generations back, human beings all have Common ancestors, so really we're all relatives Which also means all relationships are relatively incestuous Further back we have common ancestors with chimps And gorillas and elephants and plants, and billions Of years back our ancestors are all single-cellular But what I find incredible isn't this principle Of "unity of common descent", that's just elegant What's incredible to me is that some of my living relatives Still believe the earth was created about seventy-odd Centuries ago – around the time of the Egyptians By a benevolent God and that this same God Is currently manipulating the elements And that evolutionism is devilish Did I mention that I was descended from Calvinist fundamentalists? Well, I still have cousins as dedicated representatives Approximately twenty percent of them And at the dinner table we debate statistics And those debates get kind of interesting They go like this... Creationist cousins, they're my relations, I love 'em But when they talk about Jesus and Revelations and Judges I've gotta take it up with them 'Cause there's a better explanation for the place that we come from, okay? Creationist cousins, they're my relations, I love 'em But at the dinner table we get on some crazy discussions I'm always questioning their basic a**umptions And saying, "yes I believe we came from monkeys, okay?" I say, "Creationism is unscientific Ninety-nine percent of practicing scientists accept evolution As the best explanation we have for living systems Why? Because there's overwhelming empirical evidence!" And they say, "Baba, science isn't run by consensus That one percent is quite significant Those are the creationist scientists who have found signs Of intelligent design, but whenever they try and Publish it in the mainstream literature, they get black-listed Besides, your presuppositions are materialistic Maybe all that evidence scientists say they've collected Just empirically proves that God wants our faith to be tested!" So then I say, "But that means your benevolent God Is perpetrating a ma**ive intellectual fraud! So either evolution is the victim of a frame job Which explains all of its predictive successes Or we have to separate God from the scientific method" And that's when my sister steps in To defend a different kind of creationism – Cultural creationism, Also known as "social constructivism" or "post-modernism" She says: "Baba, the Western scientific method Is just as subjective as every other cultural tradition Except it's just better at pretending to be objective Because, like, all behaviour is socially constructed And mostly, it just promotes injustice And, like, gender roles have nothing to do with genitals They're just a way for men to control women's goals And try to turn us all into Playboy centerfolds Haven't you heard about that tribe in the Amazon Where the woman does the man's jobs and hunts and plants the crops And brings home the food for the man to wash? Um, I can't remember exactly what that clan is called But I know it's a published fact Because I read about it in my Women's Studies cla** And it proves that gender is a socially constructed act So how does sociobiology explain that?" And all I can do is come back with more statistics About the high percentage of indigenous Societies where polygamy is prolific And about human s**ual dimorphism And the different reproductive investments between men and women Which of course then gets my religious cousins offended Because it doesn't credit Genesis with our humble beginnings And, let's just say, the discussions are endless But it isn't about who is impartial; no one's impartial It's about how much evidence you can marshal And how you deliver the parcel And when my relatives argue, I have to have faith That we can reach the genuine article in a rational way That's a different kind of faith than my cousins have In divine creation, but hey, to all of my relatives And fellow primates, I say If it makes you feel better, go head and pray In fact, here's how I pray in a secular way I say, "I have creationist relatives and relative apes And I wish them all happiness, whatever their faith And I wish myself patience, since I relish debates Let us all be respectful and still tell it straight" Creationist cousins, they're my relations, I love 'em But when they talk about Jesus and Revelations and Judges I've gotta take it up with them 'Cause there's a better explanation for the place that we come from, okay? Creationist cousins, they're my relations, I love 'em But at the dinner table we get on some crazy discussions I'm always questioning their basic a**umptions And saying, "yes I believe we came from monkeys, okay?"